Sun and thermal energy: Europe’s precious energy sources for efficient industries and buildings | Sustainable Places 2019, Cagliari, 05-07 June 2019

Keywords: solar, thermal, renewables, energy efficient buildings, industry, heat pumps

In this workshop, we discussed the progress of five Horizon 2020 projects – HYCOOL, SHIP2FAIR, THERMOSS, SUNHORIZON and HYBUILD – all implementing solar thermal and renewable technologies for buildings and for the industrial sector. The discussion offered opportunities to identify and benchmark key challenges being faced by the projects, both technical and non-technical, and allowed to identify cooperation opportunities.

Key innovative aspects:

• The main goal and innovative aspect of SHIP2FAIR is to foster the integration of solar heat in industrial processes from the agro–food sector.
• SunHorizon aims to develop heat pump solutions that will act properly coupled with advanced solar panels providing heating and cooling both for residential and tertiary buildings.
• THERMOSS ensures an efficient match between supply and demand of energy through real- time management of thermal energy and by retrofitting through advanced heating and cooling technologies, leading to up to 30% savings in energy consumption.
• HYCOOL’s mission is increasing the use of solar heat in industry processes, by coupling of a new Fresnel CSP Solar thermal collectors (FCSP) with specially build Hybrid Heat Pumps.
• HYBUILD combines a compact sorption storage, a high-density latent storage, and an efficient electric storage in residential buildings.

Interactive discussion

The 5 projects discussed the following common horizontal issues :

• Highest technological challenges faced by the projects
• How digitalization and monitoring data can facilitate the promotion of the technologies of the projects
• How to increase social acceptance of projects’ technologies, and main non-technological barriers
• Key measures to achieve cost-reduction of projects’ technologies

Presentations and pictures of the workshop are available at this link.

HYBUILD partner University of Cyprus – FOSS Research Centre for Sustainable Energy – Chryso Heracleous – presented a paper at CATE 2019 – Comfort at the Extremes: Energy, Economy and Climate Conference.

In the face of an ever more extreme climate the world is calling urgently for answers to questions of how people can stay not only comfortable, but also thermally safe and healthy in a warming world. Current and future temperature trends and events threaten not only buildings, settlements and cities but also the temporary settlements built to cope them such as transient populations.

CATE 2019 gathered leading international figures from many fields to discuss crucial questions and ways forward on how to best provide Comfort at the Extremes.

Read the full paper and download the presentation.

Conference proceedings available here.

The Eurotherm seminar #112 – organised at the University of Lleida – did bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry, who are working in the rapidly-expanding field of thermal energy storage.

The most recent trends in areas such as novel storage materials, advanced storage concepts and configurations, thermal energy storage for renewable energy systems, and thermal energy storage in buildings were presented. This conference provided a forum for discussion among academics, researchers, and professionals who work in the field of thermal energy storage.

The event gathered more than 130 attendees.

At the European exhibition corner, some participants were interested in receiving more details regarding the two systems developed within HYBUILD.  HYBUILD partners presented some intermediate technical outcomes of the project by means of either oral presentation or posters. Useful feedback was received from experts in the topic.

HYBUILD is a group of 21 partners from 9 countries. Every month, a new HYBUILD partner is introduced in our Blog section. This month, the Institute for Renewable Energy of Eurac Research.

The Institute for Renewable Energy conducts cutting-edge applied research on how to produce energy using sustainable sources, manage energy systems and reduce energy consumption. Its activities include national and international research projects, as well as direct cooperation with industry partners. Industry-related projects involve the development of innovative products and the evaluation of technological energy saving solutions.​ The Institute has more than 100 collaborators, 5 research groups and an infrastructure of 6 indoor and 2 outdoor laboratories (one still in construction opening within 2019) in the fields of technology, efficient building systems and solar energy. The laboratoriesare a contact point between scientific research and industrial partners interested in testing and implementing innovative energy technologies. The services offered include laboratory testing on single components and integrated energy systems, monitoring of applied demonstration sites, experimental outdoor installations as well as dynamic simulation and optimisation of energy systems.

In every project, our researchers use simulations, experimental tests and creation of prototypes to turn an innovative concept into a concrete project.

The Institute offers support also in the elaboration of complex energy models as decision support system for single energy systems or buildings as well as for urban and regional areas.​​

The role of Eurac Research in Hybuild

Eurac Research is the main partner in charge of the models and simulations for the Mediterranean and Continental Hybuild energy systems and buildings. Energy models of demo and reference buildings, heating and cooling systems and hybrid storages will be developed and simulated for: i) evaluating the proof of concept through the KPIs identified in the project, ii) computing the LCA and LCC analysis and iii) testing the developed control strategies. Once the systems will be installed in the demo-cases, the models developed by Eurac Research will be validated through measurements data to have a benchmark for the performance of the running systems. Both Mediterranean and Continental concepts will be also simulated in identified reference buildings overall Europe in order to demonstrate the replicability of the Hybuild systems.

Get in touch !

Grazia Barchi is a senior researcher in the group of photovoltaic energy system at Eurac Research, Institute for Renewable Energy, Bolzano.

She is responsible for the PV integration topic and her research mainly focuses on electric grid modelling and operations, electrical storage and advanced measurements technique for smart grids. She received the Ph.D. degree in Information and Communication Technology at the University of Trento, Italy, in 2015 and the M.Sc. degree in electronic engineering from the University of Perugia, Italy, in 2011. She was visiting research at University of Applied Science and Art Western Switzerland in 2011 and at University of California Berkeley in 2014.

Mattia Dallapiccola is a researcher at Eurac Research, Institute for Renewable Energy, Bolzano.

His research focuses on modelling of photovoltaic system, BIPV, partial shading of photovoltaic system and electrical and thermal energy storage. He obtained a master degree in Energy Engineering at the University of Trento – Free University of Bolzano in 2018.

Chiara Dipasquale is a Senior Researcher at the Institute for Renewable Energy at Eurac Research, Italy.

Expert in dynamic simulations of buildings and sustainable heating and cooling systems; development of control strategies for heating and cooling systems; definition of retrofit solutions for existing buildings.

Federico Trentin received a MSc in Energy Engineering at the University of Trento – Free University of Bolzano in 2018.

After graduating he joined as researcher the Sustainable Heating and Cooling Systems research group at the Institute for Renewable Energy. He works mainly on dynamic simulation and control of innovative HVAC systems.

The draft agenda of Sustainable Places 2019 has just been released.

Join our “Sun and thermal energy: Europe’s precious energy sources for efficient industries and buildings” workshop on June 6th, co-hosted by HYBUILD, SunHorizon, HYCOOL, SHIP2FAIR and THERMOSS.

Register at https://www.xing-events.com/SP2019.html

HYBUILD is co-organising a a workshop at Sustainable Places 2019, 5-7 June, Cagliari (Italy).

Hybrid sorption-compression systems are gaining interest for heating/cooling/ refrigeration purposes in different applications, since they allow exploiting the benefits of both technologies and a better utilization of renewable sources. However, design of such components is still difficult, due to the intrinsic complexity of the systems and the lack of reliable models. In particular, the combination of adsorption-compression cascade unit has not been widely explored yet and there are no simulations or sizing tools reported in the literature. In this context, the present paper describes a model of a hybrid adsorption-compression system, realised in Modelica language using the commercial software Dymola. The models of the main components of the sorption and vapour compression unit are described in details and their validation presented. In addition, the integrated model is used for proving the feasibility of the system under dynamic realistic conditions and an example of the technical sizing that the model is able to accomplish is given.

Read the full paper at : https://doi.org/10.3390/en12061161

HYBUILD is a group of 21 partners from 9 countries. Every month, a new HYBUILD partner is introduced in our Blog section. This month, Mikrometal sro.

Mikrometal – In a nutshell

Mikrometal is a production company focused on aluminium manufacturing. The company is located in the heart of Europe near the Czech capital Prague.

The company Mikrometal sro was founded 1991, specializing in mechanical fabrication, welding and robot welding, CNC milling and assembling of aluminium fabricated products. Robots and 5-axis-CNC-machines were standard machines combined with craftsmanship and high skilled workers and technicians. All trainings were done in the company as a part of  know-how development.

Mikrometal is engaged in 2 research and development projects: radar precise measuring and aluminium foam. Since 2009 the company has increasingly carried out research activities and related investments in modern manufacturing and measurement technology.  Coming from aluminium, the company combined the traditional processes with the even lighter aluminium foam.

Advantages of aluminium foam:

• 75% lighter then solid Aluminium
• freely moldable
• absorb vibrations
• high stiffness
• high bending strength
• thermally conductive
• electrically conductive
• sound absorbing
• Buoyant

Mikrometal sro role in HYBUILD

Within HYBUILD Mikrometal sro  is developing and producing a core part of the adsorption head exchanger with high surface area. For that it is required to produce different types of aluminium foam or cellular structures from aluminium.

Staff involved in Hybuild

Dipl.Ing. Raimund Bastian

Mr. Bastian  graduate Diplom-Ingenieur at Hochschule Wismar, Fakultät für Ingenieurwissenschaften Rostock. Responsible for production and research he has participate at all research projects of the company since 1991.

Dr. Dieter Girlich

Physicist and researcher , doctor of science in physics (University of Regensburg) , patent holder for aluminium foam and heat exchange solutions , inventor or co-inventor  of 12 patents

HYBUILD is a group of 21 partners from 9 EU countries. Every month, a new HYBUILD partner is introduced in our Blog section. This month, CSEM, Centre suisse d’électronique et de microtechnique.

CSEM in a nutshell

CSEM is a private, non-profit research and technology organisation created in 1984. Its mission is to develop and transfer microtechnologies to the industrial sector – in Switzerland, as a priority – in order to reinforce its competitive advantage. It does so through cooperation agreements with established companies as well as by encouraging the creation of start-ups (43 so far, leading to the creation of 400 jobs). It holds 203 patent families and filed 26 new patents last year. CSEM has about 440 employees and achieves an annual turnover of 83 million CHF.

CSEM has its headquarters in Neuchâtel, in the heart of watchmaking region and four regional centers across Switzerland.

Its research is organised in five technology programmes: microsystems, surface engineering, systems, ultra-low-power integrated systems, and PV-center and energy management. Since 2013 CSEM PV-center is the national competence center for photovoltaics. Within this center, a 14-strong team develops solutions to build and manage an efficient, sustainable- energy world based on distributed renewable power generation. It brings together the skills to engineer this new world: power engineering, power electronics, signal processing, machine learning, optimization and control, and systems engineering. It provides services and technologies in three main areas: energy data, decentralized control, and electricity storage in supercapacitors and batteries. Applications of CSEM technologies have already been demonstrated on inverters, in direct current (DC) microgrids, and in energy management systems for residential and commercial buildings. We work with component vendors, system integrators, and utilities to turn these technologies into successful products.

CSEM role in HYBUILD

In the framework of the HYBUILD project, CSEM is developing an integrated and certified DC microgrid. This DC microgrid is meant to interface an external distribution grid, a local renewable energy source, a heat pump and a storage system with the objectives of optimizing the system efficiency and compactness. This work includes the selection of optimal components and its integration in compliance with the norm EN/IEC 61439. Moreover, a low-level controller, as well as its communication architecture, will be developed guaranteeing a stable operation of the DC microgrid while offering control flexibilities to a higher level optimizer.

Get in touch: CSEM staff involved in HYBUILD

Dr Pierre-Jean Alet received the M.Sc. in engineering from ENSTA ParisTech, Paris, France and the M.Sc. in physics from Université Paris XI, Orsay, France – both in 2005, and the PhD in materials science from École Polytechnique, Palaiseau, France in 2008. From 2008 to 2013 he was with Sharp Laboratories of Europe (UK), a subsidiary of Sharp Corporation. As a research scientist and then a senior researcher there, he initiated activities and strategic partnerships in solar cell technology and energy services. He has been with CSEM since 2013 where he is now a senior expert. He coordinates the Energy systems research activity at CSEM and manages the intellectual property of CSEM PV-center.

Mr Nelson Koch received an MSc in electrical engineering from EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland in 2017. During his studies, he specialized in smart grid technologies, renewables and energy conversion systems. After graduating, he joined CSEM as an R&D engineer where he is leading the hardware system design and embedded control activities, especially related to DC microgrid. He is co-inventor of a patent application on method of operating an energy system.

Mr Thierry Auderset obtained his Federal Proficiency Certificate of Electrical Assembly at the Professional Centre in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 2004. He then worked for various companies active in refinery, metallurgy, and electromechanical assembly in which he improved his skills in electric system manufacturing and communication systems wiring. Moreover, he awarded a diploma on the management of the KNX Siemens building automatization system in 2014. He joined the CSEM in 2018 as a Senior Technician and is in charge of vacuum systems and machine troubleshooting, project creation and implementation of preventive maintenance.

The HYBUILD consortium – formed by 21 partners from 9 EU countries – is gathered this week for a general progress meeting in Athens. The event is hosted by National Technical University of Athens – Laboratory of Steam Boilers and Thermal Plants (LSBTP).